


Red Velvet, Sugar Sweet

by kekinkawaii



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29126424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kekinkawaii/pseuds/kekinkawaii
Summary: “Hey,” Gabriel said, like they were best friends since childbirth and had pictures together of the two of them as naked babies in the bathtub together, instead of so far on completely opposite ends of the social spectrum that they couldn’t evenseeeach other.
Relationships: Gabriel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 17
Kudos: 49





	Red Velvet, Sugar Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally caved and wrote Sabriel because I love writing Sam and he deserves all the fluff and happiness I can give him. The title is from Sugar by Maroon 5.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

According to just about every cheesy teen movie Sam had watched in his life (not that he’d ever admit it unless he wanted to be tormented for the rest of his life by Dean), senior year was supposed to be the best year of his seventeen long years of adolescence so far, and, if he was lucky, one of the best years in the rest of his life too.

So far, three-quarters into September, Sam had accumulated the following experiences: a busted finger on his locker door, a twisted ankle from running up three flights of stairs, a backpack so heavy Sam was afraid of leaning back too far while standing in fear of toppling backwards and crashing into the floor, and approximately a truckton more stress and anxiety dumped onto him with the slow-but-sure realization that, in less than four months, he was supposed to figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, choose a college, maintain high-enough grades and juggle enough extracurriculars to stand out enough for aforementioned college to accept him, and all he had to look forward to as a result of all that soul crushing work was another five or so years of the same goddamn thing. 

He also hadn’t experienced any of the following: a date, a kiss, a high school party, a school dance that didn’t end up with him leaving early, head pounding and ears ringing, drugs, alcohol (save for a few sips of Dean’s beer which he deemed gross), et cetera et cetera. Which was really fucking unfair, considering that from the stories Dean’s told him, his brother seemed to have experienced all of the above, and options E, F, and G as well—including and not withholding a gay freakout and a late-night epiphany ending in him taking the Impala and driving to Castiel’s house at 4AM on a school night. It had been funny when it happened, and then ridiculously, gag-inducingly cute, and then—but _God_ Sam would rather chew on broken glass than admit it—envious. Because by the time Dean went off to college with a mechanic’s apprenticeship already under his belt, boyfriend happily in tow, Sam was still stuck in freshman year with his awkward lankiness and growing pains and total, complete lack of experience in anything remotely cheesy-teen-movie-worthy other than a montage of him studying in the library until he passed out in the cubicle.

Then sophomore and junior year passed, and he made friends with Charlie and Kevin—from DnD Club and Computer Science Club respectively—and his high-school compilation remained painfully blank, save for tacking on an all-nighter of studying. At the same time, Dean’s Facetimes and phone calls were riddled with the most ridiculous stories that Sam was nearly certain were fake—but just the slightest apprehensive, and a little terrified that they could be real. 

With all this in tow, senior year didn’t come with very high hopes, and Sam had made his peace with it. Relatively. He was happy with his higher than hell grades and gradually-diminishing hope for something to break the monotony of study eat sleep, rinse and repeat. He studied, he slept, he made president of Mathletes and shot up what seemed to be three inches overnight. Rinse and repeat.

And then Gabriel Novak slid in across from him at lunch on Monday morning. Which was wrong in so many ways that Sam couldn’t even tick them off on both hands. For one, it was Gabriel Novak. Basketball team, Rugby team Gabriel Novak. For seconds, Sam was having lunch in the math pod with Charlie, and he was ninety-nine percent sure that the boy currently sitting across from him with a grin on his face was, frankly, allergic to the math pod. Did he mention it was Gabriel Novak?

“Hey,” Gabriel said, like they were best friends since childbirth and had pictures together of the two of them as naked babies in the bathtub together, instead of so far on completely opposite ends of the social spectrum that they couldn’t even _see_ each other.

“Um,” Sam said intelligently.

“Hey!” Charlie said, her voice two octaves higher than it usually was. Underneath the table, Sam felt her hand creep over to his knee and pinch, hard, like a question and an accusation all at once. Sam shot her a nasty look, eyebrows shot up high to communicate his mutual confusion, and jiggled his leg to shake her off.

“You’re Charlie, right?” Gabriel said, and he knew her name, what the hell. “And you’re Sam?” and he knew _his_ name, what the hell.

“Uh-huh,” Sam said, suspicion and fear growing. Gabriel was notoriously known for being the class clown—though he preferred the phrase _Trickster,_ which just about wrapped up his personality in a neat little glitter bomb package.

The thought sobered him enough to snap out of his daze. “What do you want?”

“Woah, kiddo,” Gabriel said, which was just stupid because Sam was, like, ten billion feet taller than him. “Can’t a guy come and say hi?”

“Sure you can,” Sam said. “Hi. Now what do you really want? I charge five dollars a page for essays.”

Gabriel gasped. “Five dollars? That’s highway robbery!”

“Not if they get you a 100,” Sam said. “And it will. Who’s your teacher and when do you need it by?”

Gabriel raised his palms up in the air. “Hang on, I never said anything about an essay.”

“Math, then?” Sam said. “I have copies of all the old tests, and a PDF of the solution binder for all the homework questions.”

“Wh—no, I—wait, _all_ of them?”

Sam smiled. “All of them.”

“She never lets anyone _near_ that binder!”

“Not if you’re president of Mathletes,” Sam said. 

“Well, jeez, Sammy,” Gabriel said, and Sam felt his hackles rise—he _hated_ that nickname—“Who knew the goody two-shoes was such a rebel?”

“I like to think of it as assisted tutoring,” Sam said smoothly. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

Gabriel was still looking at Sam in that wide-eyed way, and it was making him antsy. “Nothing like that,” he said. “I was actually going to ask you to join the basketball team.”

Sam reeled. “Sorry, what?”

“You’ve seen yourself.” Gabriel gestured his hand in a vague motion up and down Sam’s torso. “We could use a moose like you on the team.”

“Uh,” Sam said. “How about no.”

“C’mon, Sam-I-Am,” Gabriel wheedled, and seriously, what was up with him and nicknames, “it’ll be fun! Tryouts are on Friday!”

“Let me think about it,” Sam said. “No.”

“Sa-a-am,” Gabriel said. “Sammy. Samantha. Samlami.”

Sam said, “What? No. I’m not joining the team, and that’s that. If that’s all you came here for—sorry, I guess.”

Gabriel huffed like a toddler, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to,” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. 

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like basketball.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like sports in general.”

“Why not?”

“Because I enjoy academics more so than athletics, and I don’t have enough time to attend the practices, nor the tournaments, and I would much rather spend my afternoons reading or studying or giving myself paper cuts than run around with a bunch of sweaty jocks and nearly kill each other over a basketball.”

Gabriel blinked at him for a moment with light, almost honey-coloured eyes. They made him look deceivingly innocent. “Why not?”

“Oh for—” Sam groaned. “No.”

“Fine,” Gabriel said.

Sam was nearly taken aback, but recovered quickly. “Fine,” he said. “Nice talking to you.”

“You as well,” Gabriel said, and winked at Sam before pushing out his chair and standing up. He walked over to Sam and patted his shoulder before heading out the pod.

The door closed with a resounding clatter, and Sam stared at it for a long, long time.

“That was Gabriel Novak,” Charlie said. Sam had forgotten she was there.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“Did he _wink_ at you?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam said. Very faintly.

A pause.

“The Gabriel Novak you have a huge ass crush on?”

“Shut _up,_ Charlie, oh my _god,”_ Sam said, mortified.

It took him the rest of the lunch break to wipe his mind of the event and chalk it up to nothing but a random coincidence. By then, he’d nearly convinced himself to forget about it all.

That is, until the next morning.

“Morning, Samshine!”

Sam ducked his head and closed his locker door with a loud clang, feeling heat lick the back of his neck as the voice carried through the halls, turning heads and stirring up confused murmurs.

“Hi, Gabriel,” he mumbled, not taking his forehead off the cold metal grating.

“Good mor—woah.” Gabriel’s voice came closer. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught a flash of narrowed hazel eyes. “Someone’s grumpy this morning. Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

Dean would be good friends with Gabriel, Sam decided, and said aloud, “I’m not joining the basketball team.”

“Aw, come on,” Gabriel said, exasperated. “I’m not allowed to just talk to you, now?”

Sam raised his head and looked at Gabriel. “To be fair, you did approach me the first time asking about the team. What else was I supposed to think?” Also—gone unspoken, but obvious enough that Sam didn’t even feel the need to address it—Gabriel went to parties every weekend and was on a first-name basis with the local police. The two of them as friends would be like mixing kerosene with Styrofoam.

“I mean, it wouldn’t hurt if you changed your mind,” Gabriel said, bouncing his eyebrows.

Sam rolled his eyes and slung his backpack more steadily over his shoulders. “I’ll let you know if that ever happens.”

“Awesome!” Gabriel chirped, and darted in front of Sam before he could leave. “In that case, you’ll need this.” 

He thrust out a slip of paper towards Sam. Sam took it instinctively, and then unwrapped it from its initial crumped mess.

“Text me,” Gabriel said, patting Sam on the back, and maybe someone did piss in his Cheerios that morning, and mixed in some other substances, too, because Gabriel winked— _again_ —then whirled off and disappeared into the crowd.

Sam added Gabriel’s number into his phone and spent the rest of the day feeling it burn a hole in the back of his jeans.

He spent the rest of the week trying to think of something witty, something clever, something suave and cool and funny to open off the text with.

“Ooh, what about this!” Charlie said Thursday after school. _“Are you a DNA Helicase? Because I wanna unzip your genes.”_

“Yeah!” Kevin pointed a finger at Sam. “That’s a good one!”

Sam glared. “No,” he said pointedly.

“Ugh,” Charlie said. “Picky princess.”

“Well excuse me if I don’t want to text my secret crush of three years that I’d like to unzip his _genes,”_ Sam muttered cuttingly.

“I know!” Kevin said, head peeking out from the top of his laptop. _“Hey baby, are you sodium metal, ‘cause when you get wet it gets explosive.”_

“What the hell?” Sam said. “No! That doesn’t even—”

 _“I’ll go to the basketball tryouts,”_ Charlie said. _“I’m an expert at ball-handling.”_

Sam choked on his juice box.

He ended up texting Gabriel absolutely nothing until Friday rolled around and he spent the whole morning jittery and offbeat, missing words and forgetting equations. When the bell rang, he’d nearly convinced himself to delete Gabriel’s number, rip up that little slip of paper that he’d been carefully transferring from pocket to pocket daily, and leave this whole shebang in the dust. 

(Nearly.)

Which was how Sam found himself standing in the corner of the gym, eyeing the rest of the team in their expensive get-ups and slicked-back hair and feeling like a penguin in the North Pole with his plain ratty t-shirt and beat-up sneakers. At least they were all _tall—_ for once, Sam wasn’t towering over everyone.

All of which made it nearly comedic—so much so that Sam nearly choked out a half-delirious laugh—when Gabriel swaggered into the gym, whistling and handing out high-fives. It was hard to believe that he’d lost to becoming captain of the team by only a few scant votes, though it did ramp up Sam’s curiosity by a good few notches. It almost made it worth it to come to the tryout just to watch Gabriel play. 

(Almost.)

“Sammich!” Gabriel cried out when he saw him. Heads turned. Sam winced.

“Hi, Gabe,” he said meekly.

“You came!” Gabriel sauntered closer, grinning crookedly. He was surprisingly built, now that he wasn’t covered up in layers—strong in a stocky sort of way. Sam swallowed and nudged his eyes away.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”

“Attaboy,” Gabriel said, and took a step closer—both heads tilted, one up and one ducking lower to meet their gazes. His grin slid into a smile, softer and more genuine. “Hey, actually, I—”

He jumped back when the whistle blew. 

“Alright, warm-ups! Everyone grab a ball and start dribbling! Up and down the courts, five minutes, starting now!”

The whistle blew again, this time accompanied with the thundering footsteps of a dozen hopped-up teens scrambling and shoving each other in hot pursuit for the best basketball.

“Better get going,” Gabriel said quickly, and scampered away.

Sam shook himself out of a strange reverie, and watched Gabriel jog away for a moment before following.

Warm-ups were nothing too special, and even Sam with his two left feet and constant bruised toes could dribble a basketball up and down a court. 

And then the games began.

For the next thirty minutes, what began as a budding apprehension quickly bloomed into full onset terror, mingled with a bit of awe.

Gabriel was like a _ferret._ Ducking and dodging and twisting just out of grasp, he would leap and twirl and scurry in zigzags across the court, basketball dancing between his fingers like a marionette. His trash talk was a special sort of scalding and set the opposition whirling with confusion more often than once. He slunk down to the floor and shimmied between someone’s legs at one point during the game, which, even with his pisspoor basketball knowledge, Sam didn’t think was allowed.

In fact, Sam was so enthralled that he completely missed the shout of alarm from somewhere to his left. 

It caught up to him when the basketball slammed straight into his face.

He grunted and clamped a hand over his nose, where he could already feel the blood trickling down.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he heard a voice say from next to him.

“It’s fine,” he mumbled, sounding nasally. God, why did he think this was a good idea? 

The whistle blew. In the corner of the court, the basketball finally ceased its bouncing.

The coach came up to him, eyes narrowed and scrutinizing. He checked his clipboard. “Hey, uh—”

“Sam,” Sam supplied.

“Sam. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. 

“Good.” The coach nodded gruffly. “Go clean yourself up in the changerooms. Take a breather. Come back if you want to.”

“With all due respect, coach,” Sam said, “I don’t think I do.”

The coach snorted. “Your loss, kid. Go on then.”

Sam huffed, a little amused at the bluntness, and wandered his way out the court. He heard the whistle blow again behind him (how none of them got sick of that sound, Sam didn’t know; it had been less than an hour and he already wanted to claw his ears out, or tear the whistle from the coach’s fingers and stomp it into little tiny pieces) and the commotion of the game gradually build back up, until it was like he’d never left.

In the change room, Sam bent his head down to the sink, cupped the rusty-smelling water in his palms, and splashed it onto his face. The blood was already slowing, barely a trickle, now.

He was grabbing a handful of paper towels when he heard the footsteps echoing through the room.

“Hello?” he called out tentatively, keeping his eyes trained on himself in the mirror, where he could see the hall that turned into the rest of the changerooms.

“Hey,” Gabriel said, coming into view and meeting Sam’s eyes through the mirror. “You okay?”

Sam smiled, a bit awkwardly, the best he could through the wad of paper towels pressed to his nose. “M’fine. Guess basketball really isn’t for me, huh?” he joked.

Gabriel pursed his lips at that. Sam turned around and, with a closer look, noticed with a furrow of surprise that there was genuine guilt dappled in his eyes.

“Dude,” Sam said, trying for another angle. “Seriously, I’m okay. I’ve had worse wrestling with my brother.”

Gabriel sighed. “It’s not that,” he said, voice angled so low Sam barely heard him.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Then what?”

“I just—” Gabriel was twisting his fingers in front of him, not meeting Sam’s eyes. “Actually, nevermind. It’s fine. I’m glad you’re okay.”

He turned to leave. Sam, feeling something ridiculous and impossible light up inside of him, scrambled forwards to grab him on the shoulder.

“Wait,” he blurted.

Slowly, Gabriel turned back around. His face was flushed, and it could’ve been because he’d just come in from a basketball game, been running for an hour, now, but maybe, just maybemaybemaybe.

“Tell me,” Sam said, not really knowing what he was asking but hoping, just hoping, clinging onto that faint glowing shred of hope.

Gabriel licked his lips and Sam’s eyes tracked the movement. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

“Say what?” Sam said, nearly smiling.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Samsquatch, I gave you my freakin’ _number—”_

Sam surged forwards to kiss him. He heard Gabriel squeak before his arms wrapped around his neck and he tilted his head up, way up, rising up to his tiptoes to kiss him back.

“You’re so stupidly tall,” Gabriel complained, pulling back just enough that their noses brushed. “My neck hurts.”

Sam grinned, buoyant and giddy, and tightened his arms around Gabriel, bracing himself.

“Hey, what are you—Sam!” Gabriel yelped in alarm, legs flailing and writhing like a pit of snakes until Sam carried him all the way over to the benches in the changeroom, where he sat both of them down and took Gabriel’s face in his hands to pull him in again.

“Better?” Sam asked afterwards.

Gabriel was tucked up all along his side, head on his shoulder. “Much,” he said, lazy like a cat basking in the sun.

“I’m still not joining the team, by the way,” Sam added, just in case.

“Damn it!” Gabriel snapped his fingers. “My master plan has been foiled!”

Sam laughed so loudly it echoed through the whole room. His nose was still bleeding sluggishly and there was blood on Gabriel’s face, right on his cheek, and Sam was still Sam and Gabriel Novak was still Gabriel Novak, but maybe it felt better than a cheesy teen movie anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments make my day 1000x brighter <3


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